Fathers and Small Children

Fathers and Small Children

When babies become toddlers, parents must go beyond nurturing them and begin to address two additional needs: supporting their toddler’s exploration and setting appropriate limits for the child. Through playing with their toddlers, fathers take a special role in achieving these two goals. Children learn from them how to solve problems and how to get along with others.

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. ~Stacia Tauscher

Fathers spend a larger proportion of their time playing with their young children than mothers do, and they tend to be more boisterous and active in their play. Most children enjoy this kind of play. Even if their fathers spend less time with them than their mothers, fathers become salient, or meaningful and special, to their children through play.

When fathers play with their toddlers, they are not just entertaining them. They are providing a safe, yet challenging arena for toddlers to learn how to interact with the world and with others. Through rough-and-tumble play, fathers create obstacles for their children and demand respect for limits and boundaries. At the same time, they challenge their children and encourage them to explore their own strength, their ability to do new things, and their impact on the world around them. Toddlers who must work out for themselves how to achieve goals-such as retrieving a ball that is just out of reach in their father’s hand or wrestling their father to the ground-are practicing important problem-solving skills. In-fact, when fathers are good at playing with their young children, these children score higher on tests of thinking and problem-solving skills.

“Little kids talk about the strangest things. They really do.” 
― Stephen Chbosky

Playing with fathers also helps children develop emotional knowledge, so that they can identify their own emotions, acknowledge the emotional experiences of others, and describe the causes of emotions. Toddlers must also learn emotional regulation, the ability to express emotions responsibly and control their behavior. To understand how much emotional regulation develops during early childhood, one can picture a toddler in the midst of an angry temper tantrum, holding his breath until he gets his way. Contrast this with a four-year-old who feels frustrated that the rain has ruined his plans to play football, yet moves beyond those feelings and engages in a board game with his sister instead. When children understand their emotions and know how to control them, it makes them more popular with other children.

Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.

Darell Hammond

The father’s influence on emotional development is not limited to play, but also comes through direct teaching and daily interaction. Studies have shown that, when fathers are affectionate and helpful, their children are more likely to get on well with their brothers and sisters. When children have fathers who are emotionally involved-that is, they acknowledge their children’s emotions and help they deal with bad emotions-they score higher on tests of ’emotional intelligence’. Moreover, they tend to have better relationships with other children and behave less aggressively. Fathers’ involvement in their young children’s care can even last well into adulthood. Mothers seem to have much less impact in this area of emotional regulation and peer relationships than fathers. It really is fathers who can have a major influence on helping their children build strong social relationships during childhood and later in life.

On the other hand poor relation and poor time-given father is destroy the personality of child, this type of child similar to plant of forest where is not any gardener, so there some plant grow and some are crushes, but remember grown plant are also the irregular shape,… (Episode no.2) continue

This is to remind you
When I have grown so tall,
That once I was quite little
And my feet were very small.

Here is my foot
So tiny, so small
to hang somewhere
upon your wall.

Just for you I have made,
Prints of my little feet.
Then you can remember when,
I was so small and sweet.

Soon I will grow and baby days
Will all be in the past,
But you can know my love for you,
Will always always last.

The pitter patter of little feet
Leave behind something dear and sweet
A precious treasure for me to keep
The memories of your little feet.